Immoral Society Research Articles

『기생 및 창기에 관한 서류철』의 해제(解題)와 ‘일제 통감부의 공창제도 이식(移植)’에 관한 연구

This study analyzed and examined prostitute-related documents (from September to October 1908 and in March 1909) on the enactment preparation, issuance, enforcement, detailed regulation, report format, etc, of the second document type on 2) the Prostitute Regulation Law (Prostitution System) among four types of documents composing the records of Gisaeng and Changgi. Then, this study conducted a thorough analysis of the “prostitute-related documents” while maintaining academic objectivity and neutrality.
 First, the Prostitution System targeted the prostitutes involved in a prostitution business on the Korean Peninsula during the end of the Korean Empire Period. It was a Japanese-style prostitution system which was forcibly implemented by the Japanese colonial ruler. In fact, the Japanese Resident-General arranged all the related policies, enacted and announced related laws, laid down phased and detailed guidelines, and made the Japanese police officers manage and supervise the prostitutes.
 Second, the Korean Peninsula did not originally have a nationally authorized prostitution system. In September 25, 1908, right before the colonization of the Joseon Dynasty, the Japanese Resident-General implemented the firstever prostitution system for Korean prostitutes. In other words, the Records of Gisaeng and Prostitute are bitter records on process of how the Korean Peninsula, which strictly prohibited any prostitution involving money, was degraded into an immoral society in which people traded sex without any legal punishment.
 Third, the National Unified Prostitution Law was enacted in Japan on October 2nd, 1900. The Prostitution System, forcibly implemented on September 25, 1908 by the Japanese Resident-General, was the lighter edition of the National Unified Prostitution Law restructured based on the circumstances of the colonized countries, such as Taiwan.
 Finally, a correct understanding and new perception toward the Korean modern history of Gisaeng and prostitutes need to be formed by clearly distinguishing and understanding the concepts of Gisaeng Group as the artist group that inherited the tradition of female musicians and the prostitute group as a group who lived off of prostitution during The Korean Empire’s turning point of modernization.

Financial and Psychosocial Entrapment in Aravind Adiga’s Selection Day

The present paper deals with Aravind Adiga’s fourth novel Selection Day based on extraordinary panorama of cricket game. Financial condition of the poor and bourgeois is responsible for their future planning, decision in studies and the way of life at the same time the struggle of middle and lower-class people ensnare them into psychosocial entrapments. Aravind Adiga’s Selection Day contains financial and psycho-social entrapment of Kumar Family. By the help of cricket game the writer aesthetically webs the themes of unexplored sexuality, unsatisfied desires and all the aspects of the struggle faced in the life of Radha and Manju. Eric Erikson has propounded the stages of psychosocial development, the protagonist of this novel endeavors to uplift his life therefore he passes throw these stages. His theory is adhered to Sigmund Freud’s theory of Psychoanalysis. Money minded father and psychologically traumatized sons are working day and night for golden future in the vast area of corrupt capitalist immoral society therefore this novel is a harsh criticism of money possessiveness of games and people’s different point of view regarding national glory.

REALITI SOSIAL WATAK WANITA DALAM CERPEN “KA-MANAKAH TERBANGNYA SI BURONG SENJA” DARIPADA LENSA TAKLIF

This paper will highlight the creative work ‘Ka-mana Terbangnya Si Burong Senja’ by A. Samad Said which features the issue of moral collapse. The short story of the study is seen as a human rights discourse that can provide awareness to society regarding human rights in the formation of social and cultural dynamics through the display of character and characterization of a fully significant immoral society. The work of A. Samad Said needs to be appreciated in terms of its inner meaning. The Taklif framework will be used to discuss the findings of the study because, in the Islamic view, in principle, the universe belongs to the One True God. By using a text analysis approach, the study will turn inward and bring the reader to be more open-minded in reading the author's message from the lens of Islam, which is back to the creator in the process of personality formation.

『기생 및 창기에 관한 서류철』의 서지학적 고찰과 그 가치 및 특징

This study clarified the fundamental characteristics of the Records of Gisaeng and Changgi, which are frequently misunderstood and misread, examined related data ranging from four existing bibliographies to microfilms since 1988 and the current online service, and thoroughly explored the overall description for the Records of Gisaeng and Changgi.
 First, Records of Gisaeng and Changgi are historically deplorable and miserable records that clearly show that the Gisaeng System, which has been inheriting the traditional cultural art of the Korean Peninsula, female musician, from the Goryeo Dynasty to the Joseon Dynasty and The Korean Empire Period, was forcibly changed by the Japanese Residential-General and police authority without having own power to convert into the Modern Gisaeng System, during the turning point from a pre-modern time to a modern time in the Korean Empire Period.
 Secondly, even though the Korean Peninsula went through extremely chaotic political and social situations since opening a port of Busan in 1876, there was no nationally authorized prostitution system. On September 25, 1908, which was right before the Japanese colonial period, the Japanese Resident-General implanted a Prostitution System, which is the first official prostitution system involving Korean prostitutes. In other words, the Korean Peninsula, which strictly prohibited any prostitution involving money, was degraded into an immoral society (country with an official prostitution system) where people trade sex without any legal punishments. The Records of Gisaeng and Changgi are the bitter historical scars of colonized Koreans who were victims of the prostitution system implanted in the Korean Peninsula.
 Lastly, there needs to be more detailed bibliographical studies that cover the whole contents of Records of Gisaeng and Changgi and publish books that interpret each document about “Gisaeng” and “Prostitute” in Korean. This would allow both related researchers and ordinary people to approach more easily and understand the concept of “Gisaeng” and “Prostitute” during The Korean Empire’s turning point of modernization in more detailed and correct ways. Moreover, there should be clear definitions and new changes in perception of the “Gisaeng Group” as the artist group that inherited the tradition of female musicians and “Prostitute Group” as the prostitute group who lived on prostitution.

‘The cruelty of righteous people’: Niebuhr on the urgency of cruelty

This paper responds to critics of Reinhold Niebuhr by exploring two themes important for locating his views on cruelty’s emergence in modern society. The first relates to his basic insight into the relationship between individual morality and group loyalty and solidarity. Niebuhr provides a sophisticated argument for such group dynamics in his work, issued in Moral Man, Immoral Society, as well as his essays on race. These also form the basis for his second thematic argument regarding cruelty, the role of ‘righteousness’ as it relates to security and insecurity. Niebuhr’s views on race, I argue, need to be considered more broadly as an example of his views on groups, power, and cruelty. The paper concludes with some modest proposals for thinking about combatting cruelty via Niebuhr’s counsel.

Экономическая нравственность – фундамент устойчивого развития страны и общества

The economic life of modern Russia poses a number of pressing issues, among which the problem of creating morality in society and in economy, which is the foundation of sustainable, full-fledged, effective development of any state, becomes particularly important. The relevance of this issue is exacerbated by the problems that we have seen in Russia in recent decades. They ate the high level of economic crime and economic exploitation resulting from greed and selfishness of some business representatives, sometimes with the help of government officials; widespread corruption; the growth of the shadow economy; the fall of moral foundations, the decline in education, health, science, culture. An immoral society leads to an inefficient economy. Economic morality is at the heart of many human virtues, one of which is financial literacy.

Liberalism and Tort Law: On the Content and Economic Efficiency of a Liberal Common Law of Torts

This Article has three parts. Part I begins by delineating the protocol one should use to determine whether a society is an immoral society, an amoral society, a goal-based society of moral integrity, or a rights-based society of moral integrity (i.e., a society that engages in a bifurcated prescriptive-moral practice that strongly distinguishes moral-rights claims (about the just) from moral-ought claims (about the good), that is committed to the lexical priority of the just over the good, and that fulfills its commitments to some hard-to-specify, requisite extent). Part I then proceeds to outline the protocol one should use to determine the moral norm that any particular rights-based society is committed to using to derive moral-rights conclusions. It next provides an account of the liberal moral norm that I think our rights-based society is committed to instantiating. It argues that this norm commits us to treating all creatures that have the neurological prerequisites to lead a life of moral integrity (to take their moral obligations seriously and to take seriously as well the dialectical task of choosing a conception of the good and leading a life that is consonant with that conception) with appropriate, equal respect and to showing appropriate, equal concern for such creatures, in part for their as economists understand that concept but primarily for their having a meaningful opportunity to lead a life of moral integrity. Part I concludes by examining the implications of our society's liberal commitments for (1) the tort-related moral duties and rights of its members and participants and (2) the general tort-related duties of its governments and the more specific duties of our society's courts when adjudicating common-law tort cases. This account proceeds from a premise uncongenial to economics that, from the perspective of liberalism, not all effects are commensurable - viz., that any tendency of a choice to deprive moral-rights holders on balance of a meaningful opportunity to lead a life of moral integrity by killing them, depriving them of the neurological prerequisites for leading a life of moral integrity, subjecting them to life-dominating pain, or (perhaps) treating them in ways that substantially undercut their perception that they are the authors of their own lives cannot be offset by any tendency the choice has to increase mere utility or welfare as economists understand that term. Part I argues inter alia that (1) its claim that ours is a liberal, rights-based society and (2) its account of the implications of that fact for the obligations of our society's members, participants, and common-law judges provide a normative grounding both for something like the Hand formula for negligence and for the common law's treatment of ultrahazardous activities. More specifically, Part 1 argues that liberalism implies that (1) something like the Hand formula for negligence is the appropriate standard for determining tort liability for possibly-tortious choices made by individuals who knew or should have known that their choices should be expected to impose net equivalent-dollar on others that reflect mere-utility losses the relevant victims sustained, and (2) individuals who made possibly-tortious choices they knew or should have known should be expected to disserve the interests of some others in having a meaningful opportunity to lead a life of moral integrity are liable in tort unless their choices served the on-balance interests of the society's members and participants in having an opportunity to lead such a life. Part 2 then examines whether a common law of torts that seeks solely to secure liberal corrective-justice rights will be economically efficient. More specifically, Part 2 delineates and explores twelve reasons why the correct resolution of a liberal corrective-justice claim may not be economically efficient. Finally, Part 3 identifies and analyzes the moral status (inter alia, the moral legitimacy) and likely generic desirability (moral-rights considerations aside) of the various possible non-common-law components of the positive tort law of a liberal, rights-based State - i.e., of its relevant constitutional law, statutory law, administrative regulations, and truly-judge-made law.

Reinhold Niebuhr’s Paradox: Paralysis, Violence, and Pragmatism by Daniel Malotky, and: Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics by Reinhold Niebuhr, and: An Interpretation of Christian Ethics by Reinhold Niebuhr

Reinhold Niebuhr’s Paradox: Paralysis, Violence, and Pragmatism by Daniel Malotky, and: Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics by Reinhold Niebuhr, and: An Interpretation of Christian Ethics by Reinhold Niebuhr

Major Works on Religion and Politics: Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic, Moral Man and Immoral Society, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, The Irony of American History, Other Writings

Major Works on Religion and Politics: Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic, Moral Man and Immoral Society, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, The Irony of American History, Other Writings

Tao/Lipunan, Moral/Imoral: 27 Macario Pineda at Reinhold Niebuhr

Macario Pineda’s novels, particularly his 1947 masterpiece Ang Ginto sa Makiling , engage fundamental questions about the moral nature of the human person and the possibility of societal transformation. Though dissimilar in personal background and social milieu from Pineda, Reinhold N iebuhr, social ethicist in twentieth-century American society, raises these same questions in his 1932 classic Moral Man and Immoral Society . Moreover, they similarly base their responses in Christian Faith. Pineda is uncompromising in his belief in the moral capacity of the person, especially when nurtured through education, to do good and thus to establish “Makiling,” his symbol of the transformed society, in our midst. Though convinced too of the individual moral goodness, Niebuhr is deeply aware of the powerful and corrupt forces at play in modern society, and therefore foresees an unrelenting struggle between individual goodness and society. Both Pineda and Niebuhr’s responses offer food for thought at a time when these same questions plague contemporary Philippine society.

An open Interdisciplinary Research: Professor Robert Hamilton (1743-1829)/His Works as between and beyond the Works from Adam Smith (1723-1790) and from Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971)

This study starting-entitled open interdisciplinary research is, here and now, a draft and a co-research proposal. It is addressed to interdisciplinary dedicated persons and personalities, but it maintains an open address to theologians, “pure” economists, mathematicians, neuro scientists, sociologists, historians and philosophers, artists and writers, engineers and managers (scientists and practitioners) who want, at their turn, to address research based studies and praxis case studies. These desired interdisciplinary studies are intended outlooks toward the contemporary (post-)crisis world – toward global problems representation, solvations, decision making and (re)adaptation of the structure and functions of what is or/and would be our world and our ancestors’ and followers’ world. Let be an axiomatic possibility toward a “better” world. This study has the following starting-list proposing an initial per se comparative study on the followings sets of works: Adam Smith’s two books: The Theory of Moral Sentiments. “printed for A. Millar, in the Strand; and A. Kincaid and J. Bell, in Edinburgh” (1759). D.D. Raphael and A.L. Macfie. ed. The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Liberty Fund. (1982). Knud Haakonssen. ed. The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Cambridge University Press. (2002). and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. London: W. Strahan, (1776). An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. University Of Chicago Press. (1977). Robert Hamilton’s two books: The Progress of Society. London: John Murray, 411 pages. (1830/posthumous). and Inquiry concerning the Rise and Progress, the Redemption and Present State of the National Debt of Great Britain. Edinburgh; Pickering & Chatto, London (1813). Reinhold Niebuhr's two books: Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study of Ethics and Politics. Charles Scribner's Sons (1932). Reprint: Westminster John Knox Press. (2002). and The Nature and Destiny of Man: A Christian Interpretation. Charles Scribner's Sons (1943), from his 1939 Gifford Lectures, Volume one: Human Nature, Volume two: Human Destiny. Reprint editions include: Prentice Hall vol. 1, Westminster John Knox Press 1996 set of 2 vols.

『共通の信仰』 と 『道徳的人間と非道徳的社会』

In Moral Man and Immoral Society, Reinhold Niebuhr dismissed John Dewey as a naïve moralist who, not seeing the irrational character of the behavior of all human collectives, overestimated rational experimentation, and identified God and the world, the ideal and the real. Niebuhr asserted that the responsible Christian had to accept the use of force. However, he refused to regard politics only as a struggle for power. He tried to find a way out of the “endless cycle of social conflict.” Niebuhr stressed that the experience of grace would “create the attitudes which transcend social conflict and mitigate its cruelties.” In Common Faith, Dewey defined the religious as the unification of the self and of the self and the universe. For Dewey, democracy embodies the religious. It is religious because it bases on faith in the ability of human nature to achieve freedom for individuals accompanied with social stability built on cohesion instead of coercion. Despite their differences in political orientation, Dewey and Niebuhr relied on the nature and destiny of man who could create their own world.

Wordsworth’s Concept of Nature: A ‘Balm to Weary Souls’

Declining morality was a point of grave concern for Wordsworth. He thought that Modern man has the potential for immense destruction but no corresponding moral standards to check that destruction. Wordsworth thought that life in an immoral society is extremely difficult. In such an environment Man’s survival is constantly under threat and human values are ridiculed. Wordsworth believes that moral values are essential in creating peace and harmony in any society. Wordsworth sees nature as source of morality and a remedy for the sufferings of mankind.

Ties That Bind: Walter Rauschenbusch, Reinhold Niebuhr, and the Quest for Economic Justice

Ties That Bind: Walter Rauschenbusch, Reinhold Niebuhr, and the Quest for Economic Justice

Reinhold Niebuhr's Quest for Balance in the Public Oversight of Market Economies

Three basic themes played indispensable roles in Reinhold Niebuhr’s engagements with economic issues: (1) the foundational importance of a theological anthropology for his critical assessment of complex social, economic, and political issues; (2) his focus on two clashing theories of economic order: Adam’s Smith’s doctrine of laissez-faire capitalism and Karl Marx’s revolutionary vision for the collective ownership of property within a centralized state system; and (3) his endorsement of a realistic yet viable alternative to these two classic theories, one that involved pragmatic and incremental steps toward fostering economic justice through the public regulation and oversight of a free-market economy. These pragmatic measures included allocating government resources for vitally important public goods and services at federal, state, and local levels. Though Niebuhr was initially drawn to some form of democratic socialism, he embraced this incremental strategy within the context of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s implementation of his New Deal agenda. My analysis of Niebuhr’s contributions concludes with attention to new challenges confronting contemporary quests for economic justice in a post–New Deal era, one marked Soundings, Vol. 95, No. 4, 2012 Copyright © 2012 The Pennsylvania state University, University Park, Pa di sc us sio n diussion

Why Niebuhr Matters

Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971) was a Protestant preacher, an influential religious thinker, and an important moral guide in mid-twentieth-century America. But what does he have to say to us now? In what way does he inform the thinking of political leaders and commentators from Barack Obama and Madeleine Albright to David Brooks and Walter Russell Mead, all of whom acknowledge his influence? In this lively overview of Niebuhr's career, Charles Lemert analyzes why interest in Niebuhr is rising and how Niebuhr provides the answers we ache for in the face of seismic shifts in the global order. In the middle of the twentieth century, having outgrown a theological liberalism, Niebuhr challenged and rethought the nonsocialist Left in American politics. He developed a political realism that refused to sacrifice ideals to mere pragmatism, or politics to bitterness and greed. He examined the problem of morality in an immoral society and reimagined the balance between rights and freedom for the individual and social justice for the many. With brevity and deep insight, Lemert shows how Niebuhr's ideas illuminate our most difficult questions today.

On the Transformation of the “Profession” of Pain Medicine to the “Business” of Pain Medicine: An Introduction to a Special Series

Over recent years, considerable concern has been expressed regarding the quality of pain treatment in the United States; the deterioration of which has led to the discipline as being described as in a state of “crisis”[1–3]. Our current treatment of pain is not particularly effective, resulting in a lack of improvement of quality of life among treated pain sufferers—irrespective of the increasing number and costs of treatments that are being received [4]. A number of theorists [5–8] have suggested that much of this crisis can be explained by the deepening and widening schism between the various stakeholders involved in pain care, with these stakeholders including patients, pain care professionals, hospitals, third-party payers, employers, industry (defined broadly), pain educators and societies, legislatures, and various government agencies. Hamaty [9] has described today's physician as a “lesser professional,” a “reluctant entrepreneur,” part of an immoral society. While some in the pain community maintain hope that broad health care reform will result in an improvement in the quality of care provided to patients with pain [10], the scope and impact of these efforts are still of unknown quantities [11]. Medicine as a profession , including pain medicine, has evolved in myriad ways over the past century. Some have dated medical professionalism back to the Hippocratic era [12], while others in the Renaissance, when the notion of a social obligation to treat the sick developed [13]. However, it was not until the mid-19th century that the American Medical Association (AMA) developed the first national set of ethical and practice standards [14], and one can accordingly identify 1847 as the birth date of the profession of medicine in the United States. Physicians are obligated to adhere to the (updated) AMA ethical standards, just as nurses, psychologists, physical therapists, …

Memories and Social Change: Creative Knowledge Society

There was across a long period, collapsed into the actual globalised crisis, mainly into the American and Western European mass-media pools an obvious trend: to (re)present into an unexpected way the climax of the financial competition and the locus of the high stress human activity, the stock exchange (I) – the place where people (stockholders, merchants, stockbrokers, dealers, etc.) publicly buy and sell stock and shares in companies, the turning point of investing money. I term this trend as an unexpected way, comparing it implicitly to the huge efforts of research and action (II) toward eliciting new technologies (through inventions – most on the e-World realm) and incurring the mysteries of the Macrocosm, Microcosm and deep biological stance on the Earth (through discoveries – most on the Astrophysics, Quantum Theories, and Genetics realms). So, there is a competition – at least on representational stance of our contemporary world between the two ways (I and II depicted above) to mass-media smart representations. Starting from the fact that there are human beings involved, individual and collective memories, an intrinsic becoming of the information onto time, then, there is the possibility to replace the abstract and invisible competition with a commonplace co-operation, during a so short individual work-life into a stock exchange, and a statistical confined alienation overwhelming happiness regarding the individual beings of the heads of schools and sole fathers of the contemporary great discoveries. On the other hand, also, there is into the American intellectual pool a very complex reflection of the corpus of works from Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971), but SEPARATING his two books: “The Nature and Destiny of Man: A Christian Interpretation”, and “Moral Man and Immoral Society”. This is (simply viewing) to separate memories by actions. The study proposes to imply QUALIA and PARADOXIES into this view regarding the separation of the memories by actions. Considering on the possibility of a contemporary replay to Reinhold Niebuhr’s paradigm: Moral Man and Immoral Society, there is proposed to be (re)searched an answer to the question: * WHY DOES NOT THE RATIO POVERTY/WELFARE WORK as a dynamically pro-market reform indicator, into the contemporary MARKET and ECONOMY? ** WHY DO NOT THE QUALIA and PARADOXIES SUSTAIN A BENEFICIAL COHERENCE AND COHESION OF HUMANKIND TREND(S) WITHIN A NEGOTIATION NEXUS ONTO THE COMPLEXITY OF HUMANKIND, SCENARIOS ON THE WORLD NEAR FUTURE, SCIENCE-RELIGION DIALOGUE? * If (a) [simple and/or complex] answer(s) exist(s), then it would operatively result, at least, from the construct CREATIVE PARTNERSHIP. This construct would “mean” the existence of a flow of the proposed (re)search: to complete a Charta I of GENEROSITY-CREATIVITY-SOLIDARITY WITHIN CREATIVE PARTNERSHIP, to largely diffuse the Charta I and to elicit the creative partnership onto a minimal case study on conflict-consensus on high school teenagers issues, to amend – to adapt – to negotiate the (numerical) parameters of the Charta I, to complete the extensions of the addenda as research co-themes, to gather the knowledge and the societal praxis in order to elicit the constructs: CREATIVE PARTNER, INTERNATIONALLY CIVIL SOCIETY, SUBTLE WORLD, SUBTLE INDICATORS, ECO-CONSCIOUSNESS till to construct a self-sustained Center for Creative Partnership, a Moral Market, at all. ** If (a) [simple and/or complex] answer(s) exist(s), then it would operatively result, at least, from the construct CREATIVE KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY WITHIN A NEGOTIATION NEXUS ONTO THE COMPLEXITY OF HUMANKIND, SCENARIOS ON TH WORLD NEAR FUTURE, SCIENCE-RELIGION DIALOGUE. This construct would “mean” the existence of a flow of the proposed (re)search: to complete a Charta II of OPENING (at least) SCIENCE-RELIGION DIALOGUE, to largely diffuse the Charta II and to elicit the creative dialogues versus negotiations on Science-Religion matter, at least within a minimal partnership onto a contemporary educational case study on high school issues, to amend – to adapt – to (re)negotiate the (numerical) parameters of the Charta II, to complete the extensions of the addenda as research co-themes, to gather the knowledge and the societal praxis in order to elicit the constructs: SCIENCE-RELIGION PARTNER, INTERNATIONALLY SCIENCE-RELIGION SOCIETY, SUBTLE WORLD, SUBTLE INDICATORS, ECO-CONSCIOUSNESS till to construct a self-sustained Center for a Creative Negotiation Nexus onto the Science-Religion Dialogue, an inquiry into the deepness of the actual globalised crisis, a Moral Knowledge Society, a Science-Religion Partnership market of information and knowledge, at all. This study is focused exclusiveley on Charta I, not on Charta II – this being a next stage task of the author – hoping to be other co-authors, too. This may be (also simply viewing) to aggregate the creativity, the information and the knowledge – all the triads of the science and religions wisdom – onto the future humankind society – to concord memories by actions.

Walter Rauschenbusch and the Social Gospel: A Hopeful Theology for the Twenty‐First Century Economy

Walter Rauschenbusch and the Social Gospel: A Hopeful Theology for the Twenty‐First Century Economy Janet R. Nelson If production could be organized on a basis of cooperative fraternity; if distribution could at least approximately be determined by justice; if all men could be conscious that their labor contributed to the welfare of all and that their personal well‐being was dependent on the prosperity of the Commonwealth; if predatory business and parasitic wealth ceased and all men lived only by their labor; if the luxury of unearned wealth no longer made us feverish with covetousness and a simpler life became the fashion; if our time and strength were not used up either in getting a bare living or in amassing unusable wealth and we had more leisure for the higher pursuits of the mind and the soul—then there might be a chance to live such a life of gentleness and brotherly kindness and tranquility of heart as Jesus desired for men.1—Rauschenbusch, Walter, Christianity and the Social Crisis The book by Walter Rauschenbusch which shook the religious world of our nation, Christianity and the Social Crisis, appeared just a half‐century ago. So much has happened in that half‐century both to the world and to us as a nation, that it is not altogether surprising that a book which meant so much to American religious life and to the older among us personally should be so obviously dated.2—Niebuhr, Reinhold, “Walter Rauschenbusch in Historical Perspective” When Walter Rauschenbusch presented his path‐breaking vision of a Christianized economic order in Christianity and the Social Crisis in 1907, the book galvanized the reading public, going through thirteen printings in seven years and selling more than 50,000 copies.3 Writing in 1957, Reinhold Niebuhr, the renowned mid‐twentieth‐century Christian theologian, in effect dismissed the message of Rauschenbusch’s work as dated. Rauschenbusch’s views were certainly bound by the cultural, political, religious, and economic context of the early years of the twentieth century, but contrary to Niebuhr’s contention, the timeliness of Rauschenbusch’s insights are undeniably striking today, one hundred years after their publication. His outrage at the social and economic injustices of his day, his unrelenting critique of the capitalistic economic system that had produced so much human suffering and his urgent call for the democratization of that system could not be more relevant to our own times at the beginning of the twenty‐first century. There is some irony here for Reinhold Niebuhr himself is currently attracting considerable attention after having been in eclipse for several decades. Much of this attention is due to President Barack Obama’s professed admiration for Niebuhr. In an interview with David Brooks, Obama responded enthusiastically to Brooks’ question regarding the work of Niebuhr, stating “I love him. He’s one of my favorite philosophers.” Brooks quoted Obama that he took away from Niebuhr “the compelling idea that there’s serious evil in the world, and hardship and pain. And we should be humble and modest in our belief we can eliminate those things. But we shouldn’t use that as an excuse for cynicism and inaction. I take away…the sense we have to make these efforts knowing they are hard, and not swinging from naïve idealism to bitter realism.”4 Niebuhr’s worldview is a much‐needed and bracing corrective to the eight years of Bush administration hubris that their policies at home and abroad were unquestionable reflections of the goodness of the American way of life. Niebuhr argued in his many works, including his best known, Moral Man and Immoral Society,5 that humans are inherently self‐interested and that power, even when used to advance the good, is inevitably corrupted by self‐interest. Politics is always about power and the best we can strive for is a tenuous and imperfect balance of powers. In reaction to what he perceived to be the idealism of the Social Gospel movement of which Rauschenbusch was a leading proponent, Niebuhr developed the theological position of Christian realism—realism because it was grounded in Niebuhr’s appreciation of the limits of the goodness of human nature and even...

We Have Met the Enemy And …

We live in an age in which … honesty is possible only when it skirts the edges of cynicism. All this is rather tragic. … Yet there is beauty in our tragedy. We are, at least, rid of some of our illusions. We can no longer buy the highest satisfactions of the individual life at the expense of our social injustice. We cannot build individual ladders to heaven and leave the total human enterprise unredeemed of its excesses and corruptions. —Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society